Literary genres are defined by the form and content of the works.
The first thing we are going to do before entering fully into the definition of the term literary genre is to know the etymological origin of the two words that give it shape:
-Gender, first of all, derives from Latin. Specifically, it emanates from “genus, generis”, which can be translated as “lineage”, “class” or even “lineage”.
-Literary, secondly, also emanates from Latin, in its case from “litterarius”, which, in turn, comes from the noun “littera”, which is synonymous with “letter”.
Although the concept of genre has several meanings, in this case we are interested in focusing on its meaning in the context of the arts: each of the classes or categories in which works can be classified according to their characteristics is called genre.
What are literary genres
Literary genres , therefore, are categories of classification of works of literature . According to its content and its form, a work can belong to one or another literary genre.
To place a work in a literary genre, formal, syntactic, semantic and other criteria are taken into account. It is important to mention that there is no single classification system , which is why literary genres may vary according to different conceptions.
The boundaries of literary genres are often blurred, so classification can be complex.
Aristotle's classification
In Antiquity , Aristotle recognized three great literary genres: the epic genre (which today is assimilated to the narrative genre ), the lyrical genre and the dramatic genre . There is also often talk of the didactic genre . In these sets, in turn, numerous subgenres can be differentiated: the novel , the story , the ode , the sonnet , the essay , the chronicle , etc.
What's more, within these subgenres, there are different types, among which we can highlight the following:
-The novel is divided, in turn, into a detective novel , a fantasy novel, a historical novel, an adventure novel...Among the most important writers in history specialized in novels, some stand out such as Miguel de Cervantes, Gabriel García Márquez, Charles Dickens or Umberto Eco, among others.
-The story, for its part, can be classified into micro-story, modern story, fairy tales...Figures specialized in the story are authors of the stature of Chekhov, Jorge Luis Borges or Edgar Allan Poe.
-Poetry, however, can be divided into eclogue, song, ode, elegy and satire. In the poetic field, writers such as Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti and Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer stand out.
-Theatre, however, can be established that it is divided into drama, tragicomedy and comedy, fundamentally. Significant authors are William Shakespeare or Lope de Vega.
However, it is no less true that, nowadays, when talking about literary genres everyone thinks of four: narrative, poetry, essay and dramaturgy.
The literary genre as a scheme
Beyond the theoretical interest in the classification of works into literary genres, for an author these genres function as models that provide a scheme and help him structure his work. Each literary genre has its “rules” that serve as a guide.
It must be taken into account, however, that many works are difficult to classify. A text can be a mixture of chronicle and essay, to cite one possibility, therefore belonging to both literary subgenres (or to neither, depending on the chosen criterion).